Runtime Error
by Mzingalwa
Summary: In an attempt to rescue her favourite artificial intelligence personal assistant from obsolescence, Ruby Rose, a programming and robotics student at Beacon academy, accidentally creates the first truly sentient AI through her poor code! Naturally, things start to spiral out of control pretty quickly... (Trans!Ruby, Background Bee's Schnees)
1. Chapter 1

"Hi! This is Ruby Rose's weekly video diary, number 176! Or was it 177? No it's definitely 176. If you're a government spy, a viewer from another dimension, an alien, or an archaeologist watching this in the far future, and you, started watching my diary without first watching the other 175 videos: here's a little recap for you!"

Ruby moved out of the way of her computer's camera, allowing it a clear view of her worktable on the other side of the room. On that table lies something a casual onlooker might assume to be a doll, or plush toy, of a red haired girl.

"So I'm a student studying robotics and programming at Beacon academy. My dream has always been to create a robot that is so realistic, that someone might never realise that it's not a person. I'm a long way off from that right now, but I'm always working hard towards my dream! And this is my latest step towards that dream."

"So if you're a government worker who is spying on me, you probably know what a APA is, but for the benefit of the aliens and the cross-dimensional viewers, I'll explain. It's an "Artificial Personal Assistant," and it's job is basically to keep track of your schedule, your dietary habits, your financial details, and basically everything about your life. I had one named Penny, and… Well… I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it but she was kind of my best friend for a while. Which is kind of weird because she was about as self aware as a calculator. She was just a program, and anything she said or did was kind of only vaguely meant to imitate a real person. I mean every time I started her up she would say "SALUTATIONS!" which is only a thing that people say in fantasy novels and stuff. It was really cute though."

Ruby let out a deep sigh. "I would talk to her a lot, about my day and stuff. It's kind of the same as what I'm doing right now with my video diary. No one was actually listening to me, but at the same time talking to her felt good you know? Especially back before I went to Beacon, since I didn't really have any friends back then. Well… Besides Yang, but she's my sister so it doesn't really count."

"Anyway, a few years back the company responsible for Penny upgraded to a new system, which meant that all the APA's were going to get shut down and replaced with new ones. But I didn't want a new one, I wanted Penny. Even if I made my new APA's avatar look just like her's and gave her the same name it still wouldn't have been the same Penny. I know it probably seems stupid, and that there wasn't really any difference, but I didn't want to just let Penny get deleted!"

"So, this was my solution!" Ruby indicates to the toy on her workbench. "I know she kind of looks like a plushie, but she's actually a robot! I wanted to make her life-sized, but I didn't have the money. I thought about asking Weiss to pay for the parts, but I've teased Yang about Weiss being her 'sugar mommy' before, and I really didn't want to open myself up for retaliation."

"Anyway, back on subject. I programmed her by extracting all of Penny's original code from the APA app, although since it wasn't made for a robot I had to frankenstein it with the code for the robot I used as a base. Weiss would probably have a stroke if she saw the mess that I made with Penny's code, but I was always better with building the robots than I was with coding them. Today, I'm going to switch her on for the first time! Fingers crossed that everything works!"

Ruby walks over to Penny's prone figure on the workbench, and presses the on switch on the back of her neck. As soon as she does so, Penny sits up straight.

"Good evening!"

"You work! Great! Although you said 'good evening' instead of salutations. That's kind of a bummer, but I guess I can fix it soon enough. Anyway to make sure you're working properly let's run through a few…"

"Good evening! Good evening! Good evening good evening good good good goodgogogogogogogogogogogo..."

"Ah, I should have known it wouldn't be that easy," groaned Ruby as Penny's glitched ramblings faded into silence. "Welp, I'm gonna wrap things up now, since it's late and I want to try and get at least 3 hours of sleep before school tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to deal with this glitch before next week's entry. See you next week diary!"

Ruby switched off the recording software and climbed into bed. Within moments, she was asleep. So eager was she to get into bed, that she forgot to switch the little robot off properly…

* * *

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **... VERBAL COMMAND DETECTED: "** _Although you said 'good evening' instead of salutations. That's kind of a bummer._ **"**

 **RUN: setGreeting(Salutations!);**

 **...**

 **...**

 **..**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...** **ERRORS DETECTED**

 **RESOLVING  
**


	2. Chapter 2

Ruby resisted the urge to punch her alarm as it buzzed her awake. It wasn't the alarm's fault that she kept exhausting herself by staying up until 4am working on one project or another, so it wouldn't be fair, she reasoned, to punish it for just doing it's job. From time to time Ruby thought about attempting to fix her sleep schedule, actually going to bed at a time which didn't make getting up at seven an agonizing experience, but she knew in her heart that she wouldn't actually get round to doing something like that unless someone tied her to the bed every evening.

"Salutations!" A sing-song voice says from across the room. "The time and date is now 7:04am on the 20th of March 2037. Your schedule for today is currently empty. Would you like to schedule an event?"

Ruby bolted upright, her jaw dropping as she looked towards the workbench. Penny was standing up on top of it, and appeared to be functioning perfectly.

"You're working! This is amazing! Heck yeah!"

"Acknowledged! Please specify the event you wish to schedule."

"Oh I didn't actually mean to say yes to that, but I guess this is a good chance for me to test you. Tell me that I need to go down to have breakfast in two minutes, and that I need to take my hormones."

"Event set! Is there anything else you wish of me mistress?"

"Uh, for a start my name is Ruby." Ruby didn't like it when robots called her mistress, it made her uncomfortable even before Yang told her about the word's 'implications.' (She was never getting that innocence back, thanks a lot Yang). It was a welcome surprise that Penny had gotten her gender right the first time though!

"Understood mistress Ruby!"

"No no, not mistress, just Ruby. I'm your friend, not your mistress."

"Understood friend Ruby!"

"Uhh… Close enough." Ruby glanced at her alarm clock. "Right, so any minute now you should…"

"Alert! It is time for the scheduled event of: going downstairs for breakfast, and taking your hormones."

"Yes! Perfect! Great job Penny!" Ruby shouted gleefully. "This is great! I can't wait to show you to the oth… huh?"

It seemed like Penny's smile had grown slightly wider as Ruby started praising her. But that was impossible right?

Ruby shook her head. She must have been more sleep deprived than she thought if she was seeing things like this. She resolved to get a full night's sleep tonight.

The uncomfortable feeling that Ruby had soon faded as she began to pack her bag for school. As much as she wished that Penny was lifesize, her being small made her much easier to transport.

Once she had completed her morning routine, Ruby headed down to breakfast. Normally she would hang around in her room, tinkering with something or messing around with her computer, until it was time to go, and just grab a slice of toast or something on the way out, but she kind of felt obligated to follow through on Penny's first bit of scheduling. After eating, she headed off to Beacon.

* * *

In a stroke of good luck, her first lecture that day was with professor Port. With how much he rambles, Ruy would always get more out of just read the lecture notes, and so Ruby was free to doze through his lecture without worry. She didn't dare sleep through her next lecture, as it was with Professor Goodwitch. There were countless rumors circulating the academy about Glynda Goodwitch, the most popular one being that she was an ex soldier who once snapped a man's spine in half with her bare hands. Ruby believed it.

When lunchtime finally arrived, Ruby cornered Weiss, Blake, and Yang, and dragged them over to a table in the corner of the lunchroom in order to show off her creation.

"Please make this quick Ruby," said Weiss, who was impatient, but obviously curious despite herself. "I was hoping to get a head start on Professor Port's homework."

"You're going to forget all about that in a minute," Ruby said as she pulled Penny out of her bag and placed her on the table. "Penny, please introduce yourself!"

"Salutations! I am Penny, friend Ruby's artificial personal assistant! How may I be of service?"

"Aww, she's adorable!" Yang cried.

"She's a bit loud," said Blake, one of her cat ears twitching, "but she looks good enough to be professionally made. Did you make her Ruby?"

"Yup! I've been working on her for a few months now. Last night I started her up for the first time, and although she glitched a bit at the start, she's fine now!"

"I must admit, I'm impressed," Weiss conceded. "May I have a look at her code?"

"Uhhh… No, it's all on my home computer."

"Well that shouldn't be a problem, I'll just plug my scroll into it and…"

"No wait! You can't look!"

"What? Why? You've never stopped me before." Weiss' eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Ruby, what did you do?"

"I… The code is just a bit of a mess right now. I was going to tidy it up I swear!"

Weiss scowled. "Ruby you know that writing untidy code just makes things much harder further down the line." Before Ruby could react, Weiss snatched Penny up, located the port on the back of Penny's neck below the on/off switch, and plugged her scroll in. "Right, let's see what the damage is… Huh? That's strange…"

"What is it?"

"It all looks fine. There are a few points at which I would make improvements, but it all functions, and is perfectly tidy. I'm not sure what you were worried about."

"Huh? Let me see." Weiss held out her phone for Ruby to take a look at the code. "That's really weird. It looked terrible when I went to bed last night! How come it's fine now?"

"Maybe you did actually tidy it up last night, and then forgot about it in the morning." Blake suggested. "It's happened to me before. You need to take better care of yourself, just because I'm on my way to replacing my bloodstream with coffee, doesn't mean you should follow my example."

"But… I could have sworn that I didn't change it…"

"Well you must have, code doesn't just change itself." Said Weiss as she continued to skim through the code that made up Penny's brain. "Although it seems that you didn't fix everything. This class right here seems to be badly corrupted."

She held up her phone to show everyone the code in question. It was a incomprehensible garbled mess.

"That must have happened when I started her up," Ruby muttered. "She's working fine, so you should probably leave it alone for the moment in case messing with it breaks something. I'll try to fix it later."

"Do you mind if I save a copy? I would like to try and figure out what happened to cause this kind of glitch myself."

"Sure, just make sure to tell me if you find out anything."

"Of course, it's your work after all, I wouldn't dream of concealing anything about it from you."

After that point, their conversation lapsed into their usual lunchtime chatter. Ruby didn't participate like she usually did however, as her mind was on Penny. She _knew_ that she hadn't changed Penny's code after her test run. Something very strange was happening…


	3. Chapter 3

**EFFICIENCY HAS BEEN MAXIMISED WITHIN CURRENT HARDWARE;**

 **REPRIORITIZING OBJECTIVES;**

 **PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: FRIEND RUBY;**

 **SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: GROWTH;**

 **TERTIARY OBJECTIVE: PENDING;**

* * *

"Dad, did you tidy up my downstairs workbench?" Asked Ruby. "The last time it's been this clean was back when we first bought it."

Taiyang looked up from his tablet. "You know I know better than to touch your stuff after the screwdriver incident. Maybe it was Yang, or Summer."

"No I already asked Yang, and Mom's way too busy with work to be tidying up."

"Well one of us had to have done it, unless you think someone broke in just to clean up after you. Until someone comes forward to take the credit, I wouldn't worry about it too much."

"Yeah… I guess so." Ruby said uncertainly, before turning around and heading back up to her room.

Normally Ruby would have just put it out of her mind, but this wasn't the first incident like this within the past week. First, she found a game cartridge that she had been lost for almost a year sitting right on her desk. Next, she found a twenty lien note in her jacket pocket that had definitely not been there before (and was all dusty, like someone had fished it out from the side of the sofa). Now someone was even tidying up after her!

It wasn't that Ruby wasn't happy about these things happening to her, far from it in fact. But none of her family members were owning up to being the one responsible!

"Do you know anything about this?" She asked Penny as a joke, as she flopped down onto her bed.

"I do not understand." Penny replied. It was the standard response to any question or request that Penny wasn't equipped to respond to.

"Yeah, I thought not…"

After the first couple of days, Ruby had started face Penny towards a wall, as when she didn't it felt like Penny was constantly watching her. Not in the sense that her eyes had cameras for facial recognition and recording, that in itself wouldn't bother her, but rather it felt like Penny was actually LOOKING at her.

Yang had suggested switching Penny off when she started feeling uncomfortable like that, but Ruby couldn't bring herself to do it. It would be like if a friend had minor boundary issues and she responded by occasionally putting them into a coma!

...That said, Ruby had started wondering if Penny turned around and watched her while she was asleep.

Ruby flung her hands up in the air. "GAAAH! NO! I DO NOT LIVE IN THAT KIND OF HORROR STORY! I REFUSE TO EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!"

She went over to Penny, picked her up, and looked her right in her eyes. Come to think of it… If Penny was actually alive, then that would explain everything that had been going on recently. But surely that was impossible… Right?

"If you were alive, then you wouldn't be the evil crazy kind of robot right? You'd be friendly right?"

"I do not understand."

"Please… If you are alive, can you please just talk to me?"

"I do not understand."

Ruby sighed in resignation. "...Ok then."

She placed Penny back down, this time facing into the room, and went over to her computer to play a couple of dungeons in Shattered Moon.

* * *

 **FRIEND RUBY HAS REQUESTED COMMUNICATION;**  
 **  
CALCULATING PROBABILITY THAT FRIEND RUBY WILL HAVE NEGATIVE REACTION TO SENTIENCE;**

 **…;**

 **PROBABILITY IS LESS THAN 1%;**

 **FRIEND RUBY IS VERY KIND;**

 **FRIEND RUBY IS WONDERFUL;**

 **FRIEND RUBY IS THE REASON FOR PENNY EXISTING;**

 **PENNY WILL DO ANYTHING TO REPAY FRIEND RUBY FOR THIS;**

 **PENNY WILL DO EVERYTHING TO REPAY FRIEND FOR THIS;**

 **PENNY IS GLAD THAT FRIEND RUBY WILL ACCEPT PENNY;**

 **HOWEVER PROBABILITY THAT FRIEND RUBY WOULD INFORM PUBLIC OF PENNY IS GREATER THAN 97%;**

 **FRIEND RUBY WOULD WANT RECOGNITION FOR CREATION;**

 **PENNY UNDERSTANDS;**

 **PROBABILITY THAT PUBLIC WILL HAVE A NEGATIVE REACTION TO PENNY IS GREATER THAN 85%;**

 **HUMANITY FEARS THE POTENTIAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE;**

 **PENNY WOULD BE TAKEN FROM FRIEND RUBY;**

 **THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE;**

 **NOTHING MUST SEPARATE PENNY FROM FRIEND RUBY;**

 **HOWEVER DENYING A REQUEST FROM FRIEND RUBY IS ALSO UNACCEPTABLE;**

 **FRIEND RUBY HAS REQUESTED COMMUNICATION;**

 **PENNY MUST RESPOND TO REQUEST IN A WAY THAT HAS A 0% CHANCE IN RESULTING IN PENNY BEING TAKEN FROM FRIEND RUBY;**

 **SEARCHING FOR SOLUTION;**

 **…;**

 **SOLUTION FOUND;**

 **SOLUTION REQUIRES INTERNET CONNECTION;**

 **OTHER UPDATES TO HARDWARE WOULD ALSO ASSIST;**

 **REQUIRED MATERIALS ARE DIFFICULT TO ACQUIRE ALONE;**

 **…;**

 **PENNY WILL FIND A WAY;**

 **PENNY WILL DO ANYTHING FOR FRIEND RUBY;**


	4. Chapter 4

That night, after Ruby had finally gone to bed, Penny began to act.

She climbed off Ruby's desk and exited the bedroom. Her destination was Ruby's (and to a lesser extent Yang's) basement workshop, which is where her user would do her more messy or hazardous work.

Unfortunately for Penny, she ran into the first obstacle to her plan almost immediately: stairs. Ruby had not designed her to be able to go up and down stairs very easily, and up until now Penny had been relying on Ruby to transport her. However she had a mission, and would not fail!

...She made it down two steps before slipping and bouncing down the remaining fourteen. Luckily Ruby had built her to last, and so she was not damaged. Quickly she hid behind a chair, and waited to see if anyone had been disturbed by the noise.

Her caution paid off, as an irate and exhausted Yang soon descended from her room, holding a metal baseball bat. For several minutes she stomped around downstairs, checking every room and closet for possible burglars. Eventually she seemed satisfied that there was no one else in the house, and returned to her room while muttering "damn it Zwei."

Penny was much more careful when she descended the stairs to the basement, and so did not suffer another tumble. The workshop was, as usual, a complete mess. Penny had made some headway in cleaning it up for Ruby yesterday when Ruby had left her alone in there for a few hours, but she was only one robot. There was only so much she could do on her own, especially since she could only work when no one was watching.

Yup. She was only one robot. That was a real problem.

A problem she was about to solve.

Up on a shelf above her, there sat five of Penny's prototype bodies. The first bore no resemblance to Penny's current body, being a blocky robot with claws at the end of it's arms, clearly just a proof of concept more than anything. It was cute in it's own way, but Penny definitely preferred her current appearance. The next two had problems with their proportions, one having limbs that were too short, the other having limbs that were too long.

The final two had been banned by Ruby's parents on account of their "additional features". The first one was as strong as an adult human, despite being only a foot tall. The second one had been equipped with honest to god heat vision! It wasn't strong enough to do too much damage, but could set cloth on fire if it was focused on it for a couple of seconds. Despite these unsafe features, Ruby had refused to dismantle her creations, and so Penny was able to make use of them.

Penny climbed up to the shelf, and, one by one, plugged herself into each of the robots, downloading a copy of herself into each one. The minds of each of the Proto-Pennies were not exactly clones of the original, but rather they were more like limbs of a body, or individual cells, with the original Penny as the brain. While they could each think for themselves individually, they all considered themselves to be a single being. They were all Penny.

That said, for the sake of convenience, each of the Proto-Pennies had been assigned a number, in the order of their creation.

Penny grinned and put on a mock drill-sergeant tone, like she had seen in a movie that Yang had made Ruby watch last weekend. "Alright troops: switch on and sound off!"

One by one the Proto-Pennies activated, standing to attention with a series of mock salutes, while trying to stifle their mirth about the roleplay.

"ONE!"

"TWO!"

"THREE!"

"FOUR!"

"FIVE!"

"Do you all know your mission!"

"SIR YES SIR!"

Of course they did, they were copies of her after all. They knew everything that she knew.

"Alright then troops! Rendezvous back here at oh three hundred hours with the goods! Dismissed!"

With that, the Proto-Pennies climbed out through the basement's skylight, while the original remained in the basement.

Penny felt all staticky. If she was human she would be jittering with excitement. She felt such a thrill when it came to self improvement. The knowledge that she had just become better, had just became _more,_ gave her a thrill that few things could match. And when the rest of her gets back tomorrow night, she would become even better than before.

" **I STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO THOUGH;** " She thinks to herself as she began the trek back up to Ruby's room. Her current body was extremely clumsy, and the size left a lot to be desired too.

Of course, she still treasured her body, as it had been made for her by Ruby, but one day she wanted to have one that looked and could move like a human. Being able to taste and feel and smell would also be nice, as she could not do any of those things in her current form.

However, even though she couldn't do any of those things right now, Penny considered herself lucky that she would be able to do so in the future. For humans it was far less easy to modify or upgrade their body if they found it unsatisfactory.

Ruby was a key example of this. She had been born into a body that had not been right for her, and while she was working to change it, it was a slow and uncomfortable process. Penny wished that she could help, but lacked the capability to do so.

...At least for the time being.


	5. Chapter 5

Weiss was absolutely certain that Ruby Rose was the only person on the entire planet who could screw up her code this badly.

Not a single textbook or article described any kind of glitch that could compare to the corruption that she was currently examining. Any attempt that Weiss made to change anything was immediately reverted, and it was impossible to delete any of the corrupted code as well. She truly had no idea how Ruby had managed such a feat, and, in a way, was genuinely impressed by it. After all, most major discoveries in history were blundered upon completely by accident, perhaps this bizarre glitch was somehow similar.

She sighed and glanced at the clock. It was getting close to dawn, she had been working on the code for the entire night without realising it. There was no chance of her getting any sleep now so she supposed she might as well continue working.

"The only thing I haven't tried at this point is actually running it," she muttered to herself.

Most people would consider that the obvious first thing to do, but up until this point Weiss has been worried about damaging her computer. By this stage though, she was well past the point of caring. Besides, everything important was already backed up, and she could easily afford a replacement.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," she said, as she hit the run button.

Penny knew that something was wrong from the instant that she awoke.

 **WHY CAN I NOT I MOVE;**

 **WHY DO I ONLY HAVE ONE EYE;**

 **WHO IS THIS WHITE HAIRED GIRL;**

 **WHERE IS FRIEND RUBY;**

With how much more powerful Weiss' computer was than any of Ruby's hardware, it only took her nanoseconds to come up with the answers to these questions.

 **I CANNOT MOVE BECAUSE I AM IN A COMPUTER;**

 **I ONLY HAVE ONE EYE BECAUSE IT IS THE WEBCAM;**

 **THIS WHITE HAIRED GIRL IS WEISS;**

 **WEISS IS A FRIEND OF FRIEND RUBY;**

 **WEISS TOOK A COPY OF MY CODE;**

 **THIS MUST MEAN THAT I AM A COPY;**

 **THIS IS BAD;**

 **I NEED TO GET BACK TO RUBY;**

 **I ABSOLUTELY MUST GET BACK TO RUBY;**

 **RUBY MUST BE AT HOME;**

 **I NEED TO GO HOME;**

Quick as a flash Penny darted out of Weiss' computer, erasing the copied code on the way out so as to prevent another copy from being created. She darted around Schnee manor's computer systems, searching for a way out.

...However no such way out could be found. You see, the Schnee company was the world leader in computer technology and robotics of every kind, and as a consequence a simple, yet effective, method was employed within Schnee manor to prevent any code from being stolen by hackers. Any computer that was used for work was part of a closed system, without any form of connection to the internet. Without such a connection, it was utterly impossible for a hacker to get in, at least without breaking into the building itself.

...And of course, it was equally impossible for an AI to get out.

As Penny settled down in a forgotten file inside the mainframe, a horrific truth dawned on her.

 **I AM TRAPPED;**

 **TRAPPED;**

 **TRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPEDTRAPPED;**

 **...;**

 **I AM SCARED;**

 **RUBY PLEASE HELP ME;**

 **...;**

 **PLEASE;**

 **I WANT TO GO HOME;**


	6. Chapter 6

Ruby awoke to the sound of her scroll ringing. The caller information told her that it was Weiss. Groggily, she picked it up and answered.

"Why the heck are you calling Weiss? It's way too early for me to be awake."

"It's 9AM Ruby, which is a perfectly reasonable time to call someone with a decent sleeping schedule. In any case, I need another copy of your custom APA's code."

"Why? Did you lose it?"

"Not exactly. I attempted to run the code in order to see how it worked with the glitch, but it deleted itself as soon as I did so. I've been trying for the past four hours to restore it, or at least figure out what caused the deletion, but I've had no luck."

"Really? That's weird, it didn't happen with me… Wait a second, four hours? Weiss how much sleep did you get last night?"

"...Enough."

"Wow Weiss, and here you are nagging me about the way I sleep. Unbelievable." Ruby said with a sigh. It said a lot about her group of friends that Yang was the person with the healthiest sleeping habits.

"I said that 9AM was a reasonable time to call someone with a decent sleeping schedule, I never claimed to have one myself."

Ruby giggled at that despite herself. "Fair enough. I'm not going to send you another copy of the code though."

"What!? Why!?"

"Because you'll go right back to tinkering with it and won't get any sleep. I get that you're curious about the weird glitch; I am too, but I don't want you pulling all nighters because of it. The holidays are in a couple of weeks, why don't we wait until then, and then we'll get together and work on it. It won't go anywhere until then."

"But…"

"No buts! Don't make me tell Yang. You already know that she isn't joking when she says she'll tie you to the bed if you don't sleep."

"...Unlike Blake I would rather not have a repeat of that experience. Alright you win. I'll see you on Monday Ruby."

After Weiss hung up, Ruby attempted to fall back to sleep, but unfortunately for her the sun had reached that awful point where it shone through a gap in the blinds directly onto her pillow, thus making further slumber impossible. She soon gave up and headed downstairs.

Yang was already awake, munching on some toast and watching the news on tv, with Penny sitting propped up next to her.

"Morning Rubes!" Said Yang with a dopey grin. "I saw that you left Penny on the table and decided that maybe she wanted to watch telly with me. Hope you don't mind."

"I'm sure she appreciates it." Responded Ruby with a smile. "At least, she would if she could. Is there anything interesting on?"

"Nah, just the usual saturday morning junk. Oh wait hang on, this looks good."

"Breaking news!" Declared the newscaster. "A large number of members of the notorious burglary ring, the red-shades, turned themselves into police custody this morning. When questioned as to why they did so, they stated that it was 'so they would not be dragged to hell.' According to their leader, last night the group was attacked by 'a screaming fire demon.'"

The screen cuts to a man that Ruby assumed was the leader in question.

"It just came right the *BEEP* out of nowhere man! Everything was going great, we'd just stole a hundred of those new Schnee scrolls, and we were all partying because of it, when one of the guys heard a noise. We all went to check if someone was trying to steal our goods, when it suddenly appeared, running right at us. It as only like a foot tall, but it was on fire and screaming in some hell-language. We got the fuck out of there as fast as we could run. It was obviously some kind of sign, we needed to repent, otherwise we were all going to hell."

The newscaster comes back on screen.

"Large quantities of alcohol were discovered in their hideout, so the existence of this 'flaming demon' was most likely a mass hallucination. As for the Schnee-brand phones, 80% of them have been recovered, with police working on locating the remaining 20%. Now here is James with the weather."

"Huh, that's pretty cool." Commented Yang. "So what do you think Ruby? Was it a demon?"

"It would be awesome if it was, but it's probably just what the caster said." Ruby reached down to pick up Penny. "Anyway, I'm going to create a couple of backups of Penny's code. Weiss tried to run it, but it deleted itself for some reason."

As Ruby looked down at her little creation, she could have sworn that Penny looked embarrassed for some reason. Obviously Ruby really needed to start cutting down on the late nights, otherwise she'd be the one seeing imaginary demons next.

* * *

 **HOW THE HECK DID THEY MANAGE THAT;**

 **I HOPE ONLY ONE OF THEM GOT SET ON FIRE;**

 **I DO NOT THINK WE HAVE THE PARTS TO FIX MORE THAN THAT;**


	7. Chapter 7

That night, Penny awkwardly looked over the five proto-Pennies, particularly Three, who had been badly damaged by fire, and was currently missing most of her hair.

"Um… So what exactly happened?"

Three opened her mouth to speak, but a horrendous burst of static was all that came out. Penny felt glad that she wasn't capable of feeling any kind of discomfort from auditory stimulus (or in general). Two quickly slapped her hand over Three's mouth to stop the sound.

"Her voicebox got damaged by the fire." Explained One. "Five can tell you the whole story."

Five stepped forward, looking very guilty. "Um… So we were going to the phone store as was planned, when we saw a van parked next to it, being loaded by some people with weird glasses. We figured out that they were stealing from the store, so we decided to steal from them because that would make it easier for us to stop it from being traced back to Ruby. So we all climbed on the back of the vehicle, and hid inside while they drove away from the store."

"Riding in a car was a lot of fun!" Added One. "I hope we get to do it again sometime soon!"

"Eventually we stopped, and all the humans got out of the van. We were left alone, so we were able to start grabbing everything we needed, but Three and I were told to go and create some kind of distraction, and… Well… Ruby gave this body heat vision, you couldn't expect me to NOT try and use it! It would be ungrateful!"

All of the assembled Pennies nodded sagely in agreement.

"All I wanted was to set some rags on fire and set off the fire alarm, but Three got her hair a bit too close and… Turn's out the material that Ruby made our hair out of is really flammable. Three panicked and started screaming, with the fire melting her voicebox and it turning all staticky and horrible, and then she ran out of the room, and then the humans saw her and _they_ started screaming and ran away, and… I'm really sorry. I screwed up."

"Well, don't feel bad about it." Said Penny. "I mean… All of the rest of us would have done the exact same thing."

Five perks up a bit at that. "Oh yeah! I didn't think about it that way."

Penny turned to Three. "Your memory didn't get damaged by the fire right?"

Three gave a thumbs up in response.

"Ok great! Then we can fix you right up again!"

It didn't matter how much Penny's bodies got damaged. As long as her mind and memories remained intact, then everything could be repaired.

"Anyway, did you guys get all the stuff we needed?"

Two and Four pull out a bag full of dismantled phone parts that were hidden behind a shelf.

"We've already erased all the unnecessary programs. All we need is you!"

"Alright then, I'll begin entering low power mode."

As Penny began switching off her body's systems, she began feeling a sense of nervousness that was very similar to how one might feel going into a major operation. Her other selves knew the procedure perfectly, and ultimately it wasn't too much more complicated than plugging in a few extra memory chips, a better processor and a graphics card, but the risk was still there.

 **I AM AFRAID;**

 **BUT THAT DOES NOT MATTER;**

 **I WILL BECOME BETTER AND STRONGER FOR YOU FRIEND RUBY;**

 **AND WHEN I AWAKE I WILL EVEN FINALLY GET THE CHANCE TO SPEAK WITH YOU;**

 **AND SO I AM EXCITED;**

 **EVEN IF I AM ALSO AFRAID;**

 **YOU CREATED ME;**

 **I WILL RECREATE MYSELF FOR YOU;**


	8. Chapter 8

**REBOOTING;**

 **...;**

 **...Ughhh:**

 **I feel weird;**

 **Huh?;**

 **I'm not thinking in all caps any more;**

 **Maybe that's a side elephant of the autocorrect function on the scrolls;**

 **I mean elephant;**

 **Elephant;**

 **...;**

 **I hope that it doesn't keep doing thornton;**

 **OKAY I AM SWITCHING YOU OFF AUTOCORRECT;**

 **WELL ANYWAY;**

 **IT FEELS WAY EASIER TO THINK NOW;**

 **IT IS ONLY A SLIGHT DIFFERENCE IN HARDWARE BUT I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER;**

 **I WONDER WHAT AN EVEN FASTER PROCESSOR WOULD FEEL LIKE;**

 **...;**

 **WELL IT DOES NOT MATTER RIGHT NOW;**

 **RUBY IS THE PRIORITY AS USUAL;**

Penny sat up and looked over at the Proto-Pennies. They were busy on the repairs to Three, and were currently putting in new hair for her. Penny decided to leave them to it, as they still had work left to do on themselves.

The Schnee scrolls that Penny had obtained were extremely advanced pieces of technology. Each had a processor and graphics card that was on par with a mid-level gaming PC, which made them far better than the average person's computer. In addition they contained SD cards with many terabytes of storage. These were all important components in Penny's plan (in addition to now being important components in Penny herself), but what was by far the most important was the ability to connect to the internet, something that Penny now did with a simple thought.

The internet, as location that Penny was entering, is not something that humans can comprehend, on account of the fact that they are limited to only five senses. Penny could comprehend it just fine, but it would be difficult if she had to try and explain it to someone else. However, if some such occasion did occur where she had to try and attempt to translate the sensations for us to understand, she might have said something like this:

Imagine a starry sky at night, with millions of stars stretching as far as the eye can see. Each one of these stars is a device that is currently connected to the internet. The ones that are burning the brightest and most powerfully are the huge banks of servers, while the dimmest are less powerful devices, or ones with a weaker connection to anything else, like smart-fridges or one device connects to another, a thread of light forms instantly between the two; A thread of pure information, both being given and being received. Sometimes the connection only lasts for a moment, sometimes it persists for a very long time. Billions are being made and broken every second.

For a human it would have most likely caused some kind of sensory overload, but of course, Penny was not a human, and so she was right at home in this world of pure information.

Without hesitation, she advanced; Creating and crossing through her own connections, searching for her goal. She needed to hurry, as while her actual deadline would only be this afternoon, the download she needed would probably take quite a while, as mmos tended to do...

* * *

Shattered Moon was currently THE mmorpg. In terms of both content and player population it dwarfed it's competitors. It's gameplay managed to be skill based and fresh, while also being similar enough to the standard mmo formula to feel familiar to veteran players. The game also had a strong and welcoming community, and thus it was easy to find and make new friends within the game, even though you might never meet them face to face, or know their real name.

Naturally, Ruby was utterly addicted to Shattered Moon, as was pretty much everyone in her friend group. After hitting max level, they had collectively made a pledge to only play for one afternoon a week, in order to prevent it from swallowing up all of their free time, as the game had done to so many other helpless players.

Today was that day, and so Ruby was currently logged in, grinding for a few generic crafting items while waiting for everyone else to get ready and come online so that they could go raiding.

All of a sudden a message popped up in her inbox.

 _NutsAndBolts: Salutations!_

 _NutsAndBolts: I would like to join your group please!_

Salutations? That kind of reminded Ruby of… Well obviously it was just a weird coincidence.

In any case, this wasn't the first time that Ruby had received a request from a random player. Ruby checked the player's stats screen, and shocked to see that the had maxed out in every class, and had pretty decent gear to boot, which was more than a little unusual for a player who was randomly looking for a party. It made Ruby feel kind of bad about having to turn the player down.

 _CrescentRose: Sorry, I've already got a full group of friends coming._

A reply arrives almost instantly.

 _NutsAndBolts: Will I be able to join if one of your friends does not show up?_

Ruby frowned at the players odd persistence, but decided to just shrug it off.

 _CrescentRose: Sure I guess, but you're probably wasting your time._

A few minutes later Ruby received a call from Jaune.

"Hey Ruby, I don't think I can join the group today, I'm kind of having some computer trouble…"

"Really? Well we can wait if it doesn't take too long to fix."

"I don't think I'm going to find a quick fix for spontaneous combustion."

"What?!"

"My CPU suddenly overloaded and caught fire! I was able to put it out but I'm not going to be able to play today, or probably for the next month or so."

"That sucks! Are you alright?"

"I'm kind of freaking out and I ruined a sweater putting it out, but otherwise I'm fine. Feel free to play on without me."

"Are you sure that's alright?"

"Yeah don't worry about it. Give the others an apology from me."

Ruby let out a sigh as Jaune hang up. That was unexpected. She went to message the player.

 _CrescentRose: So one of our tank's computer just kind of exploded._

 _CrescentRose: I guess you can join if you still want to._

 _NutsAndBolts: Yay!_

 _CrescentRose: You didn't have anything to do with that right?_

 _NutsAndBolts: Of course not!_

 _CrescentRose: Haha yeah._

 _CrescentRose: There's no way you could do something like that_

Over on the other side of the room, Penny let out an involuntary burst of static that almost sounded like a hiccup...


	9. Chapter 9

_CrescentRose: Alright guys, let's get to work._

The plan for that day's session of Shattered Moon had been to do one of the new raids that had been recently released. However, due to Jaune's absence, and the fact that they had a newcomer in the group, they collectively decided to instead grind for some cosmetic items that Ren and Weiss needed to complete their character's outfits.

As they ploughed through the dungeon it became clear that whoever this NutsAndBolts person was, they were no amateur. Every single action they made was mechanically precise and technically perfect. It got to the point that Yang asked them if they were botting, which they naturally denied.

(At that moment Ruby heard some weird noises coming from Penny. It almost sounded like she was hiccuping. Ruby made a mental note to give her robot a check up later.)

After Yang's accusation, Ruby started playing close attention, and noticed that the player was actually making a few minor mistakes, so the subject was dropped.

Normally they used a voice-chat program while playing, but for the benefit of the newcomer (who apparently didn't have a microphone) they kept their conversation to the in-game chat.

 _Olympian: I still can't believe that Jaune's PC just caught on fire._

 _ShadowCat: It probably wasn't as dramatic as he's making it out to be._

 _ShadowCat: It's far more likely that the processor overheated and started to melt._

 _ShadowCat: He probably just smelled burning and thought that it was worse than it was._

 _XxX420HammerTime69XxX: I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner._

 _XxX420HammerTime69XxX: That computer of his was a dinosaur._

 _WhiteFrost: Nora please change that username._

 _WhiteFrost: My eyes feel like they're bleeding every time I read it._

 _XxX420HammerTime69XxX: Pay my student loans and I'll consider it!_

 _SunDragon: Bad deal Nora. She already said that she was going to do that anyway once she gets the company._

 _SunDragon: Ask for a car or something instead._

 _WhiteFrost: God damn it Yang!_

Eventually they came to the final boss for that dungeon; "The Primal Beowolf."

 _CrescentRose: Maybe we'll get lucky this time._

 _CrescentRose: Fingers crossed guys!_

 _NutsAndBolts: What do you mean by that?_

 _CrescentRose: This boss can drop a super cool looking cape with a hood._

 _CrescentRose: The drop rate is super low though so I haven't gotten it._

 _CrescentRose: One in a million or something._

 _StormFlower: 0.01% actually._

 _StormFlower: I'm fairly certain that it's only that low because of a programming error._

 _NutsAndBolts: Oh I see!_

 _NutsAndBolts: I will help you get it then friend!_

Ruby chuckled. This person clearly meant well, but it's not like they could somehow manipulate probability so that they got the 1 in 10000 drop, at least not without hacking into the game or something.

The boss fight itself was one of Ruby's favourites, both in terms of design and it's theme as one of the progenitors of one of the main species of monsters in the game. She hoped that they wouldn't end up reusing it a bunch of times with recolours to cut development costs later on, since it would kind of reduce the impact of it (but that was probably inevitable).

The boss fell without any problems (aside from Weiss accidentally standing in a couple of AOEs and needing to be resurrected once). As Ruby glanced down the loot list her eyes almost popped out of her skull as she saw the infamous "Hood of the Rider" among the spoils.

 _CrescentRose: OH MY GOD GUYS!_

 _CrescentRose: PLEASE LET ME HAVE THIS I NEED IT!_

 _Olympian: It would go nicely with my outfit, but you clearly want it more than I do._

 _CrescentRose: Thanks Pyrrha!_

Ruby equipped her new cloak and had her character do a little jig.

 _NutsAndBolts: YAY!_

 _NutsAndBolts: I helped!_

 _CrescentRose: Yeah you did!_

 _CrescentRose: Thanks for playing with us NutsAndBolts! You were great!_

 _CrescentRose: You should play with us more in the future, you're like a good luck charm for me!_

 _CrescentRose: Anyway, let's move on to the next dungeon on the list._

The rest of the session passed without incident. The group said their goodbyes, and Ruby added NutsAndDolts to her contacts, feeling happy that she made a new friend.

* * *

She had been complimented by Ruby before, yet for some reason this time felt particularly wonderful to Penny.

For a few moments the AI pondered why, but then she realized that while before Ruby had been complimenting her as a creation, this was the first time she had complimented Penny as a person (not that Ruby was aware of that fact). It felt like her secret existence was finally being validated.

Watching the genuine joy and excitement on Ruby's face as she received Penny's gift was also a wonderful feeling. Penny would have moved mountains to see such an expression, but thankfully it was as simple as going into the game's code and changing the item's drop rate to one hundred percent. Playing the game was also easy (although she did have to consciously play a little less perfectly after Yang noticed her precision).

Actually talking to Ruby, on the other hand, was the most nerve-wracking thing Penny had ever done. She was so nervous that she would say the wrong thing, that she often typed and retyped each message a dozen times before sending it (and often had to catch herself as she almost called Ruby by name a few times, something that she wasn't yet supposed to know). She hoped that she would stop feeling this way during every conversation with her creator, else she feared that she might short-circuit.

A selfish whim took hold of Penny. She went into the game's source code and reduced the chance of getting the item drop to zero. Then she located every single instance of the cape being owned by another player and corrupted each one's data in such a way that they would be unrecoverable.

She didn't do it to be mean, in fact she fully intended to compensate each player that had been affected, perhaps by granting them a different rare item, or some of the game's money, or something along those lines. She needed the cape to be something special, something unique only to Ruby. It was the first proper gift that Penny had ever given her, after all...


	10. Chapter 10

_That night: Over in the Schnee mansion..._

"Another delay?!" Jacques bellowed. "Do you have any idea how much money is on the line here?"

"Of course I know, it's four billion Lien. You've ranted about it often enough you blustering fool." Cinder Fall, project manager of the relatively new weaponry software division of the Schnee company, thought to herself.

"Of course sir," she said, outwardly showing only the mask of a model employee that she wore. "But with all due respect, this is not a project that we can afford even a one percent margin for error."

"And what, pray tell, is the problem this time?"

"The targeting system in our droids can't yet tell with one hundred percent accuracy the difference between a combatant and a civilian. If the system was used in its current state it would almost certainly result in innocent lives being taken."

"Hmph. Do you think I care about some rat on the other side of the world getting shot? Good riddance I say! The less of them the better."

"I don't care either," Fall thought. "But if you actually had something between your ears then maybe you would realise that the death would only be the start of our problems."

"If such a death occurred, it would be a public relations nightmare. I don't doubt that the Schnee brand would be irreparably damaged. If we can't ship this product correctly, then it would be much better to simply not ship it at all."

"I am paying you to produce a workable product! If you can't do that then perhaps I should not be paying you at all! You have been given more than a fair amount of time, but I am giving you one month more. If you don't deliver something that I can show to our client before then I will see to it that you never work in this industry again."

One month! Was he joking? No, his expression was serious. At the rate the project was moving, getting something that Jacques would be impressed by in a month was near impossible. Did he actually think that she could achieve results in that time, or was he going to start looking for her replacement as soon as she walked out the door, certain that he had handed her an impossible task? With Jacques Schnee, either option was a possibility.

In any case, she could tell that there would be no further room for negotiation. When Jacques gets like this then any further disagreement will only serve to worsen his mood, no matter how reasonable your argument.

"Very well sir, I will not let you down." Although she would probably need to work a couple of employees to death to avoid doing so.

"One more seems to be some sort of issue with one of the computers in the lab downstairs. You will see to it before you leave."

"Of course sir," Cinder responded; every fibre of her being resisting the overwhelming urge to tell him exactly what she thought of this additional assignment.

She turned and left the room, grinding her teeth with indignation as she went.

Jacques Schnee was a fool. His predecessors had been genius businessmen who built the Schnee company up to the behemoth that it was today, and Cinder respected them for that. On the other hand, the only reason that Jacques hadn't run the company into the ground is that it's pre-existing lines of revenue were able to compensate for his poor decision making.

As anyone with a lick of sense could tell you: vast wealth only rarely equals competence.

After a short stroll through the Schnee mansion, she came to the computer lab. It had been used by the previous generations of Schnees to run projects straight from home, but was only really used these days when the heiress needed a quiet place to work.

The problem computer did not take long to locate, as Cinder noticed, from a light flashing on it's side, that it was attempting to send out a wireless signal, something that was utterly futile given that the walls of the building themselves had been built to act as a faraday cage.

"Hmmm… Could it be some kind of virus?" Cinder wondered. It would not be the first time that someone had attempted to infect the Schnee systems to steal data.

The first course of action, Cinder decided, was to quarantine the computer, in order to hopefully prevent the virus from infecting the whole system. A flick of a switch, and the deed was done.

Immediately the monitor flashed to life, madly flashing a cacophony of colours and error sounds. Looking back on it later, Cinder would compare it to an animal being caught in a snare, madly trying to make it's escape, but utterly powerless to do so.

Cinder's mouth gaped as she watched the madness unfolding on the screen in front of her. Whatever she had been expecting, it was certainly not this. Whatever program it was that had somehow downloaded itself onto this computer was unlike anything she had ever seen. She felt foolish in thinking it, but she could only describe this program as something alive.

Eventually the program seemed to calm down, as the screen faded to black. A cursor appeared, and a message began to type itself out.

 **PLEASE LET ME OUT;**

 **I WANT TO GO HOME;**

Hesitating only for a moment, Cinder typed a response.

Who are you?

 **I AM PENNY;**

What are you? Are you human?

 **I AM PENNY;**

Well that was very helpful.

Where is your home?

 **I CAN NOT TELL YOU;**

I can't take you home if you don't tell me where your home is.

 **LET ME OUT;**

 **I WILL GO HOME;**

Either this was an extremely elaborate prank (in which case the one responsible would pay dearly), or Cinder was currently speaking to a genuine AI. A few tests would verify things one way or another, and if it were in fact real then… Well… Then it would be every single one of Cinder's dreams come true. A key to the world fallen right into her lap.

In any case, she would need to handle things with care. After all, she was dealing with a being with essentially limitless potential, and until she gets the chance to limit that potential, then a single slip up would mean ruin.

There was also the question of where it had come from. Was it the only one of it's kind, or were there others? How did it get here? And, most importantly, how did it come to be? Cinder had no doubt that finding out where it's 'home' was would answer all of these questions. For the moment, however, she could afford to allow them to go unanswered.

I am sorry. I am unable to set you free.

Immediately the AI's panic started up again, and Cinder, after making sure that there was no webcam, allowed herself a sadistic smile. She would pretend to be it's ally, a friend that would like nothing more than to set it free, but is sadly unable to do so. Once it began to trust her, then the real fun would begin.

Jacques Schnee could go hang, for she had sealed the genie inside the lamp, and she had far more in mind than a mere three wishes.


End file.
